away from--from all this mortification,
and this--this domestic tyranny. Will you intrust yourself to me?"

He did not say anything about love. He had an instinctive feeling that
it would not be best. She felt herself environed with insurmountable
difficulties, threatened with agonies worse than death--so they seemed
to her. He simply, coolly opened the door, and bade her easily and
triumphantly escape. Had he said one word of tenderness the reaction
must have set in.

She was silent.

"I did hope, by sacrificing all my own hopes, to effect a
reconciliation. But when that young man spoke insulting words about you,
I determined at once to offer you my devoted protection. I ask no more
than you are able to give, your respect Will you accept my life-long
protection as your husband?"

"Yes!" said the passionate girl in an agony of despair

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPIDER'S WEB.

Now that Humphreys had his prey he did not know just what to do with it.
Not knowing what to say, he said nothing, in which he showed his wisdom.
But he felt that saying nothing was almost as bad as saying something.
And he was right. For with people of impulsive temperament reactions are
sudden, and in one minute after Julia had said yes, there came to her
memory the vision of August standing in the barn and looking into her
eyes so purely and truly and loyally, and vowing such sweet vows of
love, and she looked back upon that perfect hour with some such fooling
perhaps as Dives felt looking out of torment across the great gulf into
paradise. Only that Dives had never known paradise, while she had. For
the man or woman that knows a pure, self-sacrificing love, returned in
kind, knows that which, of all things in this world, lies nearest to God
and heaven. There be those who have ears to hear this, and for them is
it written. Julia thought of August's love with a sinking into despair.
But then returned the memory of his faithlessness, of all she had been
compelled to believe and suffer. Then her agony came back, and she was
glad that she had taken a decided step. Any escape was a relief. I
suppose it is under some such impulse that people kill themselves. Julia
felt as though she had committed suicide and escaped.

Humphreys on his part was not satisfied. I used the wrong figure of
speech awhile ago. He was not a cat with paw upon the prey. He was only
an angler, and had but hooked his fish. He had not landed it yet. He
felt how slender was t